A Krogan Scientist
by davidnm2007
Summary: What happened to the mouse? Stranded on Earth along with Wrex's army, Urdnot Fortack, Lord High Researcher, has to find a new role for himself in the aftermath of the Terminal Broadcast. An invitation to meet with the Civil Redevelopment Committee leads him to study the post-Reaper War world... (This is another alternative ending for ME3.)
1. Chapter 1: An Unexpected Appointment

'Now, if I can get a closer look at you, you little runt...'

Though it may have surprised a casual observer, Fortack, the Lord High Researcher to Clan Urdnot, was happy. He was bent over a human-scaled microscope, peering awkwardly through the eyehole. The microscope was sat on a bench, surrounded by clutter. The bench was no tidier than the rest of the improvised laboratory in which Fortack was working. It was inside a big canvas field-tent; the sides rippled in the wind. The drafty space was lit by lamps mounted on the tent-poles. The space smelt faintly of ozone and solvents, and also of the packed earth on which the tent had been erected.

The object of Fortack's attention was a small rectangular chunk of bluish-grey metal. Faint geometric traceries hinted at its actual nature. Fortack had received it from a courier late last evening, and he had spent most of the subsequent night poring over it.

'If I'm right,' Fortack muttered, 'and the Lord High Researcher usually is right, then you are a piece of a power-transmission system. From a Sovereign-class Reaper's main gun...'

The possibilities the little sliver of metal held were significant. Fortack's mind was filled with happy images of large explosions being detonated by speculative krogan warships as they destroyed their speculative enemies. And, taking the daydream a step further, the adulating crowds of the new Krogan Empire as their warlord paid tribute to the man whose detailed research had made all this possible... Explosions. Success. Respect. What was there not to like?

Like most krogan, Fortack found satisfaction in a good explosion.

Now if he could just make some sense of the structure of this chip...

All around him were the sounds of the Urdnot encampment beyond his tent Vehicle engines humming, guttural voices talking, feet scrunching on mud and dirt. Fortack had them all blotted out.

He was so focused on his work that he didn't even notice the Clan Chief's arrival until Wrex wrapped his knuckles on his shotgun.

The sharp sound made Fortack twitch. He turned with a murderous scowl on his face, wondering which whelp dared to disturb him. Then his eyes focused -

A massive Claymore shotgun, held with nonchalant menace in one hand. A savage omni-blade glowing sootily beneath it. Black Rage armour with red lights glowering in recessed grooves. And a face with a characteristic set of scars.

'Uh, Clan Chief,' Fortack said, quickly stifling his glare. He tried to look appropriately-respectful. 'I, uh, didn't hear you enter!'

'About time you looked up,' Urdnot Wrex said. The Clan Chief glanced at the microscope on the table behind Fortack. 'You're still puzzling over that scrap of junk.' It wasn't a question.

'Yes, my lord,' Fortack said. 'This could be the key to-'

'Well forget it for now,' Wrex said. Fortack noticed that Wrex had a datapad in his other hand. 'You have a working omnitool, don't you?'

'Yes, Clan Chief,' Fortack said. 'Working' was an arguable exaggeration - it worked about half the time, and that was after Fortack had spent weeks fiddling with the firmware and the components. Still, post-Broadcast, many people didn't even have that much.

Wrex raised the datapad. It too was alive, Fortack noted. He was unsurprised - if anyone would have access to working consumer electronics, it would be the Clan Chief. 'I'm sending you a map and some co-ordinates,' Wrex said, 'and details of an appointment. I want you to go.'

Fortack blinked. 'Uh, what is it about, Warlord?'

'You'll like it, I think,' Wrex said. 'But if you do or don't, I still want you there. The krogan need to be involved in what the other species are doing. We can't let ourselves get sidelined again.' Wrex looked around Fortack's makeshift lab. He grunted. 'And it's not like we have many other scientists, is it, Lord High Researcher?'

Fortack was surprised. 'This is about ... science?' He'd assumed there was a gun that needed servicing, or perhaps some injured krogan who needed help.

'Yes,' Wrex said. The Clan Chief pushed a key on his pad with his thumb. Fortack's omnitool beeped as it received the files - for once, the transfer went smoothly. Fortack breathed a quiet sigh of relief. The last thing he wanted was to look bad in front of the Clan Chief!

'Thank you, my lord,' Fortack said. 'I'll look at it-'

As if on cue, Wrex's omniblade flickered and burst out a shower of sparks. They crackled to the floor. A tang of ozone wafted through the room. Wrex shook the Claymore, growling in irritation. 'Oh yeah,' he added, 'and when you get back, I'll want you to take another look at this. Damn thing keeps crapping out on me.'

Before Fortack could say anything else, the other krogan turned around and stomped out of the tent. There was a brief swirl of daylight about the entrance-flap and Wrex was gone. Fortack stared after him, then looked down at the omnitool.

Now where was it Wrex wanted him to go? And why did it matter?


	2. Chapter 2: A Waiting Room And A Salarian

Later, Fortack eyed the nearby building with suspicion. It was one of those weird glass towers that humans seemed to consider impressive; to krogan eyes it just looked fragile. One tiny bomb and the whole thing would be glittering shards on the floor.

'Fools to build like that,' he muttered. 'No wonder the Reapers trashed this place.'

Foolish or otherwise, however, he had an appointment to keep. Just to make sure he was in the right place, he glanced again at his omnitool. The meeting was listed on the screen, at this address. The holographic display flickered, then steadied. A moment later it blinked out, the temperamental tool suffering another of its sudden electronic aneurisms. Most such devices were unreliable these days. Fortack counted himself lucky in that he could at least get his omnitool to start up. The Reapers had not been the only casualties of the Broadcast.

Well, the omnitool was gone for now, as invisible as a salarian's sense of honour. No help for it. Shrugging, Fortack glanced up. Time to move. He walked toward the designated skyscraper.

The wind picked up, moaning coldly through the half-ruined cityscape around him. Fat, grey clouds were scudding through the sky. It seemed another autumnal rainstorm was on its way. Krogan didn't shiver, but Fortack still felt chilled. It was never this cool on Tuchanka, even though the locals here apparently considered London's climate to be 'mild'. More mad humans, Fortack supposed. Even now, there were still a lot of them on this planet.

As he approached the glass tower, Fortack got a good look at it. This one was particularly strange – it was a sort of bulbous ellipsoid, like an upended vegetable. Apparently even some humans conceded that this one looked odd. Fortack had heard an allied soldier refer to it as a 'gherkin', which was supposedly some kind of Earth plant.

Fortack had never actually seen a gherkin, so he had no available point of comparison.

Still, odd or not, it was no wonder that his appointment was in this tower. As he approached the main reception door, Fortack took a quick look around. The glass vegetable was one of the sole few intact buildings left in London. Most of what Fortack could see was wreckage. Scorch-marked walls, smashed pavements, shot-up storefronts and, of course, lots of broken glass. Somehow, the gherkin-tower had avoided almost all of the damage. The worst of its suffering consisted of a few broken windows. In that sense, it was the weirdest building for miles around.

Aside from the cold and the rain and all the humans, London did look like a redbrick version of Tuchanka, Fortack supposed.

There were a couple of notable distinctions. Instinctively, Fortack looked to his side. In this place and at this hour, he didn't see any others of his kind nearby. There were plenty of krogan warriors in London, of course, but apparently they were all busy somewhere else at the moment. He felt that was something of a mercy, all considered. The Clan Chief himself may have sent Fortack on this journey, but many krogan would look down on him for what he was doing. Why waste time on meaningless things like research when there might still be things to fight, lurking amongst the ruins?

Fortack ground his teeth, trying to stifle a slight growl. He tried to swallow his frustration. He understood, of course. He had done a lot for Clan Urdnot over the years, and more recently for the Allied Clans, but it wasn't visible. Not in the way a warrior's blade cracking open an enemy's skull open was. Other krogan couldn't see the merit of his work, so they didn't respect it. He was sure that if they knew what he did for them, they would appreciate him, and he would have his place in the pantheon of krogan heroes. Not everyone could fight with the bullet and the bomb - Fortack liked to think that he fought with his brain. If only the other krogan would recognise it.

Or at least, he kept telling himself that they would acknowledge his efforts. Some days, Fortack even managed to half-convince himself that it was true. He shook his head. It was good to be away from judgemental eyes and mouths.

As well as the lack of other krogan, there was one other prominent difference from sunny Tuchanka. 'Probably not so many of those back home,' he said to himself, looking southwards.

The view to the southwest was dominated by a Reaper carcass. When it had keeled over, the monster had planted itself on top of the whole of Thames Street and a goodly chunk of the surrounding neighbourhood. The river and the South Banks were concealed behind the machine's vast corpse. One of its legs was stuck vertically up in the air, locked into a sort of mechanical rigor mortis. Rumour had it that some of London's ever-present pigeons were already nesting up there. Nesting or not, the birds certainly hadn't wasted any time making messes on it.

'Foul thing,' Fortack muttered. 'Rust in pieces, you mechanical monster.'

Did Reapers rust? Fortack had no idea. He supposed it would depend on what exactly they were actually built out of. Intriguing, but something he had no time to follow up right now. Dismissing the idea, he shook his head. He was almost at the building; just a few steps further and he was inside the front door.

Inside the gherkin, it was warmer. Several big electric heaters had been set up around the reception area. As it was intact enough to be usable, this building had been swiftly co-opted by Earth's Interim Government, to be one of their big regional offices. As such, it was busy. The space was full of people, moving and talking and chattering. Telescreens mounted on the walls blathered out the day's news, adding background white noise to the chaos.

There was a lengthy queue at the reception desk, but Fortack couldn't be bothered with the wait. He stomped his way over, shouldering his way past those who didn't get out of his way fast enough. With a massive krogan bearing down on them, most of the queue's occupants did give way.

The ones who didn't got a satisfying shoulder-jab.

Behind the desk was a human receptionist, a young woman in an Alliance uniform. She looked harried. Barely a year ago, that would have been unheard of – why would a person do a VI's work? But of course hardly any VIs still worked properly, and the more complicated and information-dense they were, the harder they'd been hit by the Terminal Broadcast.

Fortack thumped his fist onto the desk to announce himself. The flimsy structure rattled. The receptionist's face changed - was she startled? Or was that indigestion? He hoped she couldn't read his face better than he could parse hers. 'Fortack,' he said. 'Lord High Researcher to Clan Urdnot. I have an appointment with the Civil Redevelopment Committee.'

The woman looked at him with what he thought was suspicion. Humans had such flat, inexpressive faces! Reading their moods was troublesome. Fortack found them almost as hard to make sense of as those damnable salarians.

'Let me just check,' the woman said, reaching for something on her desk.

'Well be quick about it,' Fortack said, trying to sound grand. 'The Lord High Researcher does not like to be kept waiting.'

Coloured light spilled across the woman's desk. Fortack blinked in surprise. She had a working console! Unlike his damaged omnitool, this device appeared to be functioning in a reliable and stable manner. Presumably that meant it was a post-Broadcast build; since it had only been six months, there weren't many of those available yet. Fortack supposed it made sense that the human military were getting preferential access to the new builds. It still annoyed him, though – he wanted one too! With an appropriate tool, there was so much more that he could do. So much data and so little time…

The woman's brow moved down and her lips curved floorwards. What did that mean? Oh yes – the human was frowning. 'Ah,' she said. 'So I see. It's in Meeting Room Three – that's on the third floor. I'm afraid the elevator isn't working – we're a bit short on electricity at the moment – but the stairs are just there. Feel free to head over whenever you're ready.'

Whenever he was ready? Fortack prickled at that. His felt his mouth twist into a snarl. He was a krogan; he was always ready! Just because he wasn't at the front of every battle – then a sudden thought pulled him up short. The human probably didn't care about that. In fact, she probably hadn't meant to be rude. She may even have meant to be polite.

She was looking at him, eyes wide and mouth open. That expression, at least, was clear enough. 'Is – is everything all right, Mr, uh – Lord High Researcher?'

Well, alien as they might be, they certainly felt fear too.

Fortack tried to pull his expression into something more neutral. 'Yes,' he said. 'Everything is fine. I will see the Committee immediately.'

Before any more inter-species awkwardness could occur, he stomped away from the desk. He heard whispered remarks and muttered comments as he withdrew, but that was no great surprise. He got that reaction a lot.

A short while later and Fortack found himself sat in a waiting area upstairs. Surprisingly, there was a bench sturdy enough to take the bulk of a krogan. In fact the waiting area was furnished with seating arrangements for several species, including something that appeared to be one of those padded cocoons the rachni used. Apparently the Redevelopment Committee was actually at least semi-serious in its talk about a 'multi-species effort'.

To Fortack's side, one of the walls bore windows. They provided a panorama over London's north east. In the distance Fortack could see at least two other Reaper corpses, sprawled incongruously across the urban landscape. There were others out there - toward the end, London had been swarming with the things - but visibility was poor. As Fortack had surmised, the clouds had gathered in and rain was falling. He could hear it pattering against the glass. Already slick traceries of water were obscuring the view.

The waiting area was quieter than the reception, but it was not empty. In one corner an asari and a human woman were busy arguing about something. They were sketching diagrams and equations on the wall behind them with pieces of charcoal. Fortack guessed they too were a bit short in the 'working omnitool' department. He scanned over their carbonised scrawl, in case it was anything interesting. Something to do with the mass effect and its application to geodesics, apparently. Fortack had to privately confess that his grasp of general relativity was fairly limited, so there was nothing he could add to that discussion. He looked away.

On the far side of the room a nervous-looking salarian was sitting there. He kept wringing his hands and looking around. Fortack noticed the salarian kept glancing at him then quickly looking away.

Fortack found himself grinning. The other krogan might not be at all intimidated by him, but by Tuchanka's glassy wastelands, he could make this salarian uncomfortable!

The Lord High Researcher got up and walked over.

The salarian was perched at one end of a cheap and corporate-looking human sofa; there was just enough room on the frayed blue cushions for a krogan. Fortack dumped himself onto the fabric. The inexpensive frame groaned under his bulk. Startled, the human and the asari looked toward him. The salarian jerked like he'd received an electric shock.

'So, pyjak,' Fortack said affably, 'what brings you here?'

'Well, uh, you see, I, uh...' The salarian looked terrified.

'Don't see many krogan around here, do you?' Fortack said. He was tempted to add, _Probably because you tried to sterilise our species..._

Apparently the salarian had guessed where that line of conversation might go. He took evasive action. 'The name's Chorban. I'm here for the same reason you are, I guess. An invitation from the Redevelopment Committee?'

There was no need to mention Wrex's intervention. Fortack just nodded. 'So you're a scientist, then?'

The salarian nodded with enthusiasm. 'Yes. Or maybe I was. Rather than am. I'm not sure.'

Fortack blinked. At least this salarian was animated enough that the krogan was able to get some sense of his emotional state. 'You're not sure?'

'The company I worked for doesn't exist anymore,' Chorban said. 'They were based on the Citadel, you see.'

Fortack glanced skywards. 'But it's only over there!' The Citadel was still sat in the low, polar orbit around the Earth that it had been put in all those months ago by the Reapers. It was clearly-visible by daylight from London when it was passing overhead, and on one of those rare, cloud-free nights it was one of the brightest things in the sky. That along with Earth's weird-looking greyish piebald moon.

'Yes, but we were trapped inside the wards,' Chorban said. 'You know, when the Reapers...' The salarian shuddered; nictitating membranes flashed over his eyes. Clearly this was a painful memory. 'When the Reapers took it. Or perhaps re-claimed it.'

'You survived?' In spite of himself, Fortack was actually interested. Surviving a Reaper attack like that would need both brawn and brains. If he'd made it out of that hell alive, this salarian must be tougher than he looked.

The salarian looked down at the floor, then up at one of the walls. He didn't speak for a short time. Nearby, rain pattered against the glass. The asari and the human were arguing again, their voices adding a susurration of speech to the background sounds. The salarian took a breath, then exhaled. 'Yes,' he said. 'Me and some others. There were a lot of people in the wards. The Reapers used infantry to clear them. You know, Cannibals, Marauaders, Husks.'

Fortack nodded. He did know. He'd dissected many Reaper-monster corpses over the past few months. 'They didn't use the giant ships?'

'The giant ships were there,' Chorban said. 'Supervising. They mostly held back. They were boxed in with us, when the wards shut. I think they didn't want to damage the structure itself. The Citadel, I mean. Or they'd been told not to.'

' "Told" not to?'

Chorban nodded, some animation returning to his face. 'Yes. I have a theory, you see, about the Citadel. I think it was one too.'

'The Citadel was a Reaper?'

'Yes. Or at least, maybe. Hard to be certain. But we know it's a Reaper artefact. We know it co-ordinated the mass relay network.'

'I heard that's really why the network's down,' Fortack said.

Chorban nodded. 'Yes. The relays themselves aren't too badly damaged. The Charon Relay itself is basically intact, and so are the ones at Arcturus. That system is close enough that ships can get there in reasonable time, even without the relays. And apparently the word on the QECs from Thessia, Rannoch and Palaven is that their relays are intact too. The Terminal Broadcast didn't seem to hurt them in quite the way it did machine intelligences.'

'Bahak,' Fortack noted.

Chorban nodded, very animated now. 'Yes. Yes, exactly! When the Bahak Relay was destroyed, it released its energy explosively. That didn't happen during the Terminal Broadcast - hence we're all still alive. But the network's offline. My theory is the Citadel was a command-and-control centre, run by a central intelligence. We have the Shepard recordings - we know she spoke to something whilst she was at the Tower. There was definitely some sort of advanced AI on the Citadel. And when the Terminal Broadcast went off, it scrambled that AI.'

'Like it did with all our omnitools and VIs,' Fortack said.

'Overwriting the system processes with junk data,' Chorban agreed. 'Reaper code, randomised. Maximum entropy. Transmitted through quantum entanglement, with the relays themselves acting as "observers" for the entire galaxy.'

'That should have entangled us too,' Fortack said.

Chorban cocked his head on one side. 'You're quite smart,' he said. 'For a krogan, I mean.'

The krogan looked down on the salarian. He sneered. The salarian quailed.

'I'm also smart enough not to hit you, pyjak. This time.' Fortack affected a snarl. Once more, the asari and the human glanced toward the sofa, before quickly resuming their debate.

'Point taken. But yes, you're right. We would have been.'

'Hit?'

'No, entangled! But organic data storage is all analogue - sensory data! Just whatever hits the sensory nerve, basically. Synthetic data is all binary - noughts and ones.'

'On and off,' Fortack agreed. That was the whole basic point of binary data - it was absurdly-easy to represent physically. Flip a switch into the on position, where a current flows, and you have your one, and the off position with no current as your zero. There was every reason to be expect that the Reapers must have followed this basic principle.

'Yes,' Chorban said. 'There's a fundamental difference in how we work. That's why Reapers and synthetics can't directly read what's in the prothean beacons - analogue data! It was all based on sensory transmission. They have to use an organic nervous system as a translation layer.'

'Saren,' Fortack mused. He'd read all about that turian traitor. Strange to think that by the end, a man who had once been a noted warrior had been reduced to little more than a walking dictionary for Sovereign. 'So the Terminal Broadcast just washed over us. Our brains couldn't do anything with the junk data, so they ignored it. But that doesn't explain the geth.'

Chorban glanced at the door to the interview room itself. He fingered his collar. 'Oh yes, the geth. They were damaged, though. It certainly landed a hit on them! But anyway, I think they might be a special case.' He glanced again at the door.

Fortack was looking back out of the window. The London rain was crashing down in earnest now. It was oddly fascinating. Rain wasn't just a visual thing, or a sense of wetness on the skin. Fortack was learning that rain was sound, too, from the gentle hiss of light drizzles to the near-waterfall-like roar of the downpours. And there was a smell, too. That odd scent after rain, earthy and yet also faintly fresh. Prior to the arrival of the krogan Grand Army on Earth, Fortack's experience with rain had been limited. It did rain on Tuchanka, of course, but much less than here, and Urdnot was located in a relatively-arid region. Storms like this were rare.

The sound of rain on the glass was loud now.

Speaking quietly, Fortack said, 'You know, I met her. Once.'

'You met who? The geth?' The salarian's membranes slid out again. Fortack assumed that meant the alien was surprised by the change in conversation. Flat-footing a salarian - the other krogan wouldn't appreciate what that meant, but Fortack still had to smile a bit.

The salarian shuddered at the sight of teeth. Even more reason to smile.

'No,' Fortack said. '_Her._ Shepard. She was on Tuchanka. This must have been about eighteen months ago.'

'Before Bahak,' the salarian said. 'Before the War.'

Before Bahak. Before the Reapers. Less than two years, but it might as well have been another lifetime.

'No,' Fortack said. 'Not before the War. We've always been fighting this war, all of us. We just didn't know it until after Bahak. Some people didn't know it until much later.' He didn't even try not to sneer.

The Salarian Union had by all accounts paid a brutal price for their early intransigence over the genophage cure. With fewer allies to call on, Sur'Kesh and her inner colonies had been hit hard. If the patchy QEC reports were any guide, civilisation's survival there had been a close-run thing. At the time of the Terminal Broadcast Talat itself had been under siege, and the central city's fall had been expected within hours. The salarians had found themselves fighting a war they were ill-prepared to deal with. Unfortunately for them, Reapers were a bit big for back-stabbing.

'Not all of us,' Chorban said. 'I tried to tell them, but no-one wanted to listen.'

Fortack blinked. 'You knew?'

'No,' Chorban said. 'At least, not exactly. You mentioned Shepard. Believe it or not, I met her too. Before anyone knew who she was.'

'That must have been ages ago.' Did salarians even live that long? It seemed like Shepard had been famous for years, a vast reputation that Fortack had initially found hard to square with the average-sized human he'd met in his lab at Urdnot. Shepard's visit to Tuchanka had soon corrected his misapprehensions, though. She'd helped take down a thresher maw, killed Gatatog Uvenk and butchered her way through half of Clan Weyrloc. The krogan liked what they saw, and by the end of the epic rampage, Shepard had been halfway-adopted.

'It was in 2183,' the salarian said. 'Before she'd exposed Saren. She, uh...' He made a noise. It might have been a nervous laugh. 'Actually, she caught me doing something I shouldn't have.'

'It can't have been that bad. You survived.' The events of Urdnot Grunt's Rite of Passage had entered clan legend. Although Fortack had never personally seen Shepard in action, he was well aware that she left a high body-count behind. And one that now arguably included every single Reaper in the galactic disk.

'I was scanning the Keepers,' Chorban said. 'Trying to see if I could learn anything about them. Total flagrant and wilful violation of Councilliar law, of course. And Shepard caught me red-handed.'

Violation of Citadel law? The salarian was quite casual about his crimes. Fortack was surprised by his own reaction: he had to stifle a guffaw. A _flagrant and wilful _violation of Citadel law? Well, perhaps this salarian wasn't all bad!

'I assume she didn't care much for council law either,' Fortack said.

'Apparently she thought the science should come first.' Chorban looked up, toward the ceiling and, somewhere beyond the sky, the Citadel. He drummed his fingers on the armrest beside him. They made a sharp, staccato sound on the polished wood. 'Perhaps if the science had come first, all along, we wouldn't have got in this mess. That's what a lot of people are saying now. The Council said they were acting to preserve galactic order, but what benefit is that if it's a corrupt order?'

'And now we know the asari were quietly sitting on their own beacon, all along,' Fortack remarked. He stared pointedly at the two arguing figures over by the wall with the charcoal equations. They failed to notice his glare. A lot of secrets had been uncovered during the chaos of the war, and many of them had been embarrassing to the powers that be.

'Yes,' said Chorban. 'And you know what I think? I wonder if that's what the real reason for it was. All the proscriptions and licenses and so forth. It wasn't stability or preventing rogue AIs. It was protecting the financial power of the asari. They thought the Citadel and the Keepers were prothean work, so studying them might invalidate some of the edge the beacon gave them.'

'Only they weren't,' Fortack said. 'They were Reaper work - or Reapers themselves!'

'If we'd been able to study them freely, perhaps we could have learnt something, soon enough to help,' Chorban said. 'There were things to be found. Ilos - the protheans saw some of the Reaper's secrets, even if it was too late! But the powers that be wanted to preserve their own wealth and privilege. And we've paid that price in the blood of billions.'

Fortack found himself forced to re-evaluate his opinion of Chorban up higher. By the flensing winds of Tuchanka, the little pyjak actually sounded angry! He actually genuinely sounded like he was disgusted by the actions of the old galactic order.

'What happened to you?' Fortack heard himself ask. 'On the Citadel, I mean.'

'After the Reapers claimed it?' Chorban's membranes flicked across his eyes. 'Nothing good. We didn't get much warning. I remember there were confused bulletins on the extranet. Unidentified ships, pouring out of the relays. Then we started seeing explosions in the sky - all silent, of course! And then there were Reapers, here, _between the wards_! And-'

The salarian stopped. The membranes flickered across his eyes, three times, fast. His breathing was rapid and ragged. Hyperventilation, Fortack noted. Apparently this was a sensitive memory.

Feeling unusually polite, the krogan waited quietly. Beyond the window, the rain hissed against the glass. Somewhere nearby within the building, a pipe groaned as an air-bubble worked its way through the plumbing.

Chorba's breathing steadied. 'They made their first landings around the Presidium,' he said. 'We didn't know it then, but they were making a grab for the Tower. Apparently the machinery in there was important. And it seems it wasn't quite doing what it was supposed to. So they had to have it.'

The salarian was retreating into speculations about the technology. Clearly approaching the occupation of the Citadel directly was difficult for him. Although he was not a warrior himself, Fortack had known fighting - it was hard to live on Tuchanka without experiencing some violence at least every now and then. He could well appreciate the shock and the rage of those kinds of savage surprise.

Chorban said, 'They offloaded troops into the Tower, and then into the Presidium. We don't really know what they were doing up there. But my guess is they were trying to roll back some of the changes Shepard made to the software, with the prothean file, in '83.'

'Odd they couldn't do it remotely,' Fortack said. It seemed an appropriate way of keeping Chorban talking.

Chorban nodded. 'Yes, I've had that thought too. My guess is, it's a security feature. If the mass relay network's core processes are accessible wirelessly, from anywhere in the galaxy - well, that raises the chances of it getting hacked, doesn't it? So perhaps you can only get at the core systems from one place, and you have to physically go there. It's a bit of a risk, granted, but in theory it's a place that's under your control.'

'That makes some sense,' Fortack allowed. 'And intruders would have to already know what they were looking for to find it.'

'Yes,' Chorban said. 'We know that at the end of the protheans' cycle, the Reapers locked them out of the network completely. That didn't happen this time. They locked individual colony clusters, but not the entire galaxy.'

'And that only makes sense if they couldn't lock the galaxy any more,' Fortack said.

'Obviously the Ilos data file made quite a difference. My guess is, it did something like change the permissions on the relay settings. Suddenly the Reapers weren't system administrators anymore!'

The Reapers demoted to endline user status? Fortack realised he was laughing. That must have burned inside their metal bellies. Oh, the humiliation! Effectively the machine-gods had been trolled by the organics, and on an epic scale.

'Are - are you all right?' Chorban had that expression that Fortack was pegging as nervousness again.

'What? Oh, yes! I just like your theory, that's all.' The krogan tried to still his chortling. He met with partial success.

'So, yes, that's what I think they were doing at the Tower. A hard reset on the entire system. Certainly it was half an hour after they took the Tower when the wards started closing. By then it was chaos. Everyone was panicking. The extranet was no help - no word from anyone in authority and full of people screaming at each other! C-Sec were there, but they were headless. No-one seemed to be able to find anyone in charge.'

'They were all dead,' Fortack noted. It was a reasonable guess. The Reapers had proved fond of decapitation strikes. And most of the higher-ups in the Citadel's administration would have been gathered conveniently on the Presidium.

Chorban nodded. 'By then all of our ships had been shot out of the sky - there was debris coming down everywhere over the wards. There was no way off the Citadel. And then the wards started moving under us.' Chorban lowered his voice. 'I'll tell you the truth. I lost it at that point. I was at our company's offices, with my partner. I always met with him there, you see. We - well, we'd had some trouble a few years ago. Back around when I met Shepard, actually.'

Chorban twitched and wrung his hands - was that a guilty look in his eyes? Fortack wasn't sure, so he decided not to press any questions.

After a pause, Chorban continued, 'Anyway we always met somewhere where there were witnesses.'

Witnesses? The krogan blinked. Evidently the 'trouble' had been rather more serious than Chorban wanted to admit.

The salarian was continuing. 'It was, you know, just for caution. Like you do. We were all there, talking, like usual. The weekly reports, facts and figures, all that stuff. Then we heard some noise outside. We went to the window. And we saw people pouring onto the street below us. Running. All frantic and shouting. And then there was gunfire. Explosions. I felt the floor shake. And then the _things_ came pouring onto the street!'

'Cannibals?' Fortack took a guess. 'Marauders?'

'Them, yes. And those, Husk things.' Then Chorban shuddered. 'And some of those mutated asari things! Oh, the _screeching_!'

The little salarian had run into Banshees? And survived? No wonder he looked a bit rattled. One of those would be a challenge even for a properly-armed krogan veteran, let alone a small and scared salarian. 'What happened?' Fortack asked.

'One of them - before we knew what was going on - it just, you know, popped into the office! Right through the wall! And it was just there! Like, just there!' Chorban pointed a shaky hand at a spot on the floor, less than a metre from where they were sat. He shifted his weight. The sofa creaked underneath him. 'It had those black, dead eyes. Staring. Lifeless and hollow.'

Fortack had to suppress a shudder. He'd never found anything appealing about the asari mating-mode. The media's galaxy-wide obsession with it had always been something that had left him quite cold, and even a little repelled. He knew many other krogan who felt the same. Still, until very recently, an asari partner had been the only realistic hope of a family that most krogan had possessed. Fortack was aware of the conflicting motivations there. Just another humiliation that his once-proud culture had been forced to accept by an uncaring universe.

Well, no more. The krogan would never be treated like _that_ again.

A strong gust of wind rattled the glass in the window. Presumably some of the panes had come a little loose during the fighting. Chorban spoke quietly. 'It took Jahleed,' he said. 'Just like that.' He mimed a sweeping grab with his hand. 'He just said, "Oh dear." And then it ripped him open. I saw his suit rupture!'

Fortack had a flash of morbid curiosity. He was tempted to ask what a volus looked like, under the pressure suit. He opened his mouth and looked at Chorban-

And stopped dead. Chorban's eyes were gleaming, with moisture gathering at the edges of them. Chorban wasn't looking at Fortack; rather the salarian was looking down, at towards his lap. His hands were there. He was wringing them.

Fortack supposed he was getting better at reading salarian moods; the strain was obvious here.

Fortack decided not to ask what volus innards looked like. Asking that might push Chorban over the edge. Fortack filed the thought away for later. Even with the extranet in the state it was in, he was sure he could look up pictures when he had a chance.

'As soon as I smelt the ammonia, I just started moving. I didn't wait. The thing - the Banshee - I think it was distracted. Or maybe the Reapers just had a short network glitch or something. Too much murdering in too little time. Anyway I got away. Ran down the stairs. Out of the building. Straight into the fighting. I don't really remember much of what happened next.' Chorban's membranes slid across his eyes again. He wrung his hands.

'What happened then?' Fortack asked.

'The Reaper troops spread out from the Presidium, down into the Wards,' Chorban said. 'I think their plan was to pen us in and butcher us all. What happened instead was that everyone poured into the Keeper tunnels. We just killed all the Keepers we found, and took everything we could carry with us. I don't think the Reapers expected that.'

Fortack nodded slowly. 'Choke points,' he said. 'The entrances to the tunnels. You could barricade them off, and kill anything that got too close.'

'It was mad,' Chorban said. 'Thousands of people, packed into those dark spaces. Lucky for us the tunnels were so big! None of us thought we were going to survive. Not for long, anyway. We all just sort of bunkered down, around the protein vats and the water works.'

'Water and food. The essentials for a siege.'

'The Reapers would have starved us out. Eventually. But we knew when they moved the Citadel.'

'You did?'

'Yes. The whole place filled with a blue light for a moment - Cherenkov radiation, I think - and I swear that the superstructure actually rang like a bell! It shook too. Like a quake. That scared a lot of people. It was surreal. It can move, but I don't think it moves very well. Too big, I suppose. Perhaps the eezo-energetics aren't favourable beyond a certain scale.'

Oh dear; the mass effect and general relativity again. Fortack moved quickly to head off this particular tangent. 'You were taken to Earth.'

'Yes, though we didn't know that for a long time. We were all bottled up inside. No sky for us to see! And we were all busy fighting, just trying to stay alive from one minute to the next. It was brutal.'

Fortack could imagine. Tunnel fights were some of the worst. And against Reapers ... well, maybe this particular salarian did deserve some respect, after all.

'And then the Terminal Broadcast hit. You were inside a thinking machine. That must have been crazy.'

Chorban nodded. 'I'll swear this until the day I die - the Citadel screamed! The arms opened, we could see the sky again, through the tunnel-mouths, and that red lightning started crawling over the Wards.'

'You're sure it was lightning?' Fortack asked. He'd seen any number of space-based videos of the event itself, and there were many unanswered questions regarding what exactly had been happening.

'I don't know. A static discharge seems plausible. And FTL drives do build up excess charge. Maybe this was similar.' Chorban shrugged. 'Anyway that's what it looked like. Then there was the pulse - the Broadcast itself - and as it went out, I felt the entire structure shudder. Like it was in agony. Then it all just became very still.'

'Good,' Fortack said, with satisfaction. 'I hope it felt some of our pain, as it died.'

Chorban sighed. 'And that was the end of it, really. The Broadcast killed all the Reaper troops. I guess it fried all the nanites inside their cyborged nervous systems.'

'I heard the gravity failed,' Fortack said.

'It did,' Chorban agreed. 'We were all weightless. Just like that. It - the whole place - it was full of people, all bobbing around. Screaming and shouting and panicking. It was chaos - again! Luckily there were local mass effect generators we'd set up, around all the tunnel mouths. They'd been working as kinetic barriers, to block Reaper fire. But when the gravity went off, they kept our air in.'

'The pulse didn't fry them?'

Chorban shook his head. 'No. The control circuitry was all pretty simple, dumb stuff. What we could improvise in a rush, basically. Not very complex and not very information-dense. The pulse hit complex systems harder than simple ones. And the fields were running off of our own power supplies, not anything coming from the Citadel itself. Basically we got lucky. I suppose we were about due some good luck. At the time we had no idea what was going on, of course.'

'How did you get down to Earth?'

'Ships started arriving, after the Broadcast. From the fleets. They started evacuating people off the Citadel. It took ages, but they got pretty much everyone off. Everyone who was still alive, I mean.'

Fortack nodded. He'd read the reports. The fleets had found just over nine hundred thousand survivors on board the Citadel's wreck, out of a pre-war population of more than thirteen million. The war had taken longer to reach the Citadel than almost anywhere else, but when it had, the residents had suffered greatly. There was nowhere to run on a space station, and few places within which to hide.

Chorban opened his mouth, as if he was about to say something else. However, he was interrupted. There was a sound from across the room. The other door, the one to the interview room proper, was sliding open. It squeaked. The mechanism evidently hadn't been oiled for a while.

A human woman stepped out. She had a darkish complexion and was somewhat short. She was holding a datapad. She looked around the room, then her eyes settled on Fortack.

'Lord High Researcher Fortack, I presume?' she asked.

Fortack stood. He thought that she did presume, but he didn't say that. Instead, he said, 'Yes, that is me.'

She nodded. 'I'm Dr. Bryn Cole. If you'd like to come through, two of my colleagues and I are ready to speak with you.'


	3. Chapter 3: On The Search For Truth

A few minutes later and Fortack was ensconced in a krogan-compatible chair, inside the other room. With the door shut, it was quieter in here. Fortack could just faintly hear the asari and the human, still arguing outside. He could also just about make out some other sounds, leaking in from elsewhere in the building. Outside, the rain had slackened off to a gentle drizzle. One side of the interview room was a long window, looking out over London. As the rain eased, the view was beginning to return. There were even some hints of watery sunlight out there.

In front of Fortack was a conference table. The representatives of the committee were gathered on the other side of it. Two of them were the humans the krogan had expected - the woman, Dr. Cole, and a male human with a receding hairline.

The third one, however...

'A geth,' Fortack said, trying not to look surprised.

'Yes,' the geth agreed. 'An accurate description of this unit.'

Fortack knew that the geth had survived the Terminal Broadcast, of course. This was a well-known fact. It was known that the various allied platforms and geth ships had fallen silent for around sixteen minutes after the Terminal Broadcast. However, careful analysis of video and comms records from that time had revealed that the geth had fallen still several seconds before the Broadcast - apparently, they had somehow gained some early warning about what was to happen, and had voluntarily entered a sort of temporary shutdown mode. That had apparently protected them to some extent from the Broadcast.

Ironically, the geth had been unable to clarify what exactly had happened. They had survived the Broadcast, but it had still hurt them. Their servers had been contaminated with junk data and recent memories in particular had been scrambled. The geth knew they had survived, but they were somewhat unsure how they'd done it, exactly. The best guess anyone had been able to put forward was that they may have been monitoring Shepard's omnitool. When asked about it, all the geth were able to offer was that no data was available.

'You have geth on the Committee?' Fortack asked, somewhat surprised.

'Indeed we do,' the other human, the older male, said. 'My name is Dr. Gavin Archer. Don't worry, you won't have heard of me. I'm here because - well, shall we say that I have some atoning to do? And the work the Committee is doing might just help.' He sighed. 'I think it's time I did some good for the future. I honestly haven't in the past.'

The geth turned its lamp-like head in his direction. Blue light spilled across Dr Archer's face. The geth said, 'The consensus holds n-n-n-'

The geth paused. 'Recalibrating linguistic systems.' Then it appeared to have something like a spasm, its body twitching and jerking. It emitted a series of strangulated noises, several of which may have been garbled syllables. Then it beeped and fell silent. The headlamp dimmed and the head slumped downwards.

Fortack blinked. Had he just watched a geth crash?

'Is he ... a problem?' Fortack asked.

An AI showing erratic behaviour - not a reassuring sight! He suddenly wondered if the krogan had been invited just so there was someone to stand over the geth with a big gun, just in case.

Dr. Cole shook her head. 'No,' she said. 'The geth are still cleaning up the damage the Broadcast did to their runtimes. Talking to organics is complicated and memory-intensive. It's the sort of thing that will glitch out. Blue-slash-415 here has been having these sorts of issues for a while now. He'll be all right in a moment.'

There was a louder, longer beep. The headlamp flickered, then brightened. The geth's head came up and steaded.

'We are recovered,' the geth said. It looked back to Dr. Archer. 'Dr. Archer, as we were attempting to say, the geth consensus bears you no "ill will", as we understand the organic term. You believed your actions were justified.'

'I was wrong,' Archer said. His face had a complicated expression on it. Fortack couldn't quite read it, but shame seemed to be a large part of it.

'You acted on the basis of false data,' the geth, this Blue-slash-415, said. 'Partly supplied from studies of heretic behaviour and partly from the Illusive Man. Neither constituted reliable sources. With inaccurate inputs to your heuristics, you had no choice about drawing false conclusions regarding geth intentions.'

'Yes,' Archer said, 'but I didn't have to do the things I did. And not just to you. I was lied to, true, but I had agency inside my own sins. I mustn't forget that. It's bad enough to err once, but damnation is to err twice.'

Fortack had the sense that he was intruding on something.

Dr. Cole interrupted. 'Anyway,' she said, 'the whole point of this exercise is moving forward. Not beating ourselves up about pasts that we can't change now. I think all of us have made mistakes. All of us have regrets. As you yourself said, Gavin, this is our chance to do something good for the galaxy.'

Fortack leaned forward. 'And what exactly,' he said, 'do you have in mind?'

'The Redevelopment Committee,' Dr. Archer said, 'has a broad mandate. We've been set up by the Interim Government, to oversee the reconstruction of Earth and the colonies. The Emergency Council itself signed off on our instructions.' Archer glanced at the window. 'There's rather a lot of reconstruction that needs doing.'

'We work on projects at every level,' Dr. Cole put in. 'Some of them are the basic stuff you'd expect. Sewers. Power grids. Broken walls. But we also deal with higher-level work as well.'

'One of our major areas of interest,' Dr. Archer said, 'is re-activating the mass relays.'

'That's possible?' Fortack was surprised. Although it did chime with what Chorban had been saying. If the machinery was still basically functional...

'We think so,' Archer said. 'It's advanced, granted, but it's technology. Not space magic. What was built once can be re-built.'

'We've had some successes already,' Dr. Cole noted. 'I believe that's what T'Sarnaev and Karimova are arguing about, out there.'

'You mean the asari and the human?'

This time, the geth spoke. 'They were here earlier for a progress report. They are both working on the Relay Reconstruction Project. Professor Karimova considers the current, public theory of the mass effect to be a fraud. She describes it by analogy to Ptolemaic epicycles from Earth's geocentric cosmology. An elaborate mathematical system which can duplicate the behaviour of the sky, as seen from one planet, but which would be useless if taken anywhere else.'

'Because it's not based on the real physical theory,' Fortack said. 'It exists to obfuscate, not to enlighten.'

'Yes,' the geth said. 'A geocentric cosmology can accurately predict that the stars will rise each night. But it cannot tell where Earth would be located in Mars's skies. Professor Karimova believes that the mass relays are designed so as to suggest a "geocentric" mass effect, as it were, rather than a "heliocentric" one. The galaxy learns a theory that is good enough to allow its inhabitants to use the relays, and the other technologies that the Old Machines have heretofore allowed us. But, that theory offers no real insight into the inner workings of the cosmos. Consequently it stunts our advancement. It forces us to develop along the paths the Old Machines desired. Dr. T'Sarnaev agrees with this hypothesis.'

Fortack blinked again. 'Then what are they arguing about?'

'Professor Karimova believes that the best approach is by seeking new data on high-energy particle interactions, as seen in supernovae and other cosmological events. Dr. T'Sarnaev believes a better approach would be to build a new particle supercollider, here on Earth. We understand that organic methodologies for the funding of scientific research are a large portion of this debate.'

Science funding. Well, that discussion could run and run. Fortack was glad not to be caught up in that argument,

A thought occurred to the krogan. 'Geth,' he said. 'What's your stake in all of this? What brings you here?'

'The geth seek responsible co-existence with the organic cultures,' Blue-slash-415 replied. 'The Old Machines sought to exist apart from all other societies. We understand that such a self-imposed quarantine is an error. Separation leads to partitioning of data. Without clear communication, data cannot be shared. Memories become corrupted. With distorted inputs, decision trees will form suboptimal branches. Unnecessary conflicts may arise.'

Fortack blinked, trying to parse what the geth had just said. Translating out of machine-speak ... 'You're saying that isolation breeds mistrust?'

'Correct,' the geth said. 'Now that we have established peace with our creators, the geth consensus wishes to be involved in the affairs of the galaxy. Their affairs are ours too. And we can contribute.'

'The geth,' Dr. Archer said, 'have provided a useful perspective on many issues. A few years ago I would never have believed I'd say this, but I hope our partnership continues.'

'But doesn't the rest of the galaxy want you dead? I thought you're still technically illegal.' Fortack looked squarely at the geth. Its head-flaps moved in a wave-like gesture, flexing and shifting.

It was Dr. Cole who answered. 'That's technically true,' she said, 'but not for much longer. The Interim Government has suspended the anti-AI laws.'

'They're still on the statute books,' Dr. Archer said, 'but no-one's allowed to act on them.'

'And all four main parties have an AI-ban repeal clause in their manifestos,' Dr. Cole added. 'I think we can reasonably assume that after next February's election, legal personhood for AIs will be pretty much a given.'

Fortack had seen the posters going up around London's Green Belt refugee camps, advertising the viewpoints of various political factions ahead of the coming February. Privately he thought next year was much too soon to be worrying about things like politics. Given the damage to Earth's infrastructure, next decade might be a better bet. However, it seemed that the humans were insistent on producing at least the appearance of normality within their government.

Cynically, Fortack suspected the real reason for the general election was that Admiral Hackett and his Emergency Council wanted to pass the buck to some other unfortunate, as soon as possible. There were a lot of problems that needed fixing, many of them complicated and messy, and who really wanted to be stood on Ground Zero for any of those shitstorms?

'If you came back from the dead,' Fortack said, 'what about the Reapers? Are they hiding a restart button somewhere up their tin arses?'

Dr. Archer winced. Dr. Cole looked pained. The geth's head-flaps spasmed. 'The Old Machines are inactive,' the geth said.

'We've been investigating this question too,' Dr. Cole said. 'As far as we can tell, no. The Reapers are as dead as they look. Of the ones in space, all their trajectories are purely Newtonian. There's no evidence of powered flight. Comms monitoring reveals no transmissions. No telemetry. No hidden signals. As for the Reaper corpses planetside, they are all at ambient temperature. There is no evidence of any electricity consumption within their hulks. No power generation. Teams have entered them, through hull breaches, and have reported no internal activity. People exposed to them show none of the personality deviations we associate with indoctrination. There is also no evidence of any repairs to the damage the Reapers have suffered. Basically, they're dead and gone.'

'The Reapers committed suicide,' Fortack mused. 'Weird.'

'No,' Blue-slash-415 replied. 'We believe that the Old Machines' intent was different. We believe they attempted to subvert the firing of the Crucible mechanism. The recordings from Shepard-Commander's omnitool show clear evidence of deceit. They presented Shepard-Commander with several options. Their preferred action was clearly fraudulent. The "Synthesis" propositions make no sense in scientific terms - something which the Old Machines should certainly have been aware.'

There was a pause. The geth's head-flaps surged in and out and the machine twitched. Fortack heard the quiet whining of lots of little servo-motors, inside the mechanism.

Blue-slash-415 said, 'The Old Machines knowingly shared false data.'

The geth actually appeared to be offended by that.

Shepard was alive, in intensive care in a reasonably-intact hospital in Vancouver. Fortack knew all about it as she was being guarded by Urdnot warriors. Wrex was taking no chances at all on that one. She'd been found on the Citadel after the Terminal Broadcast, in an air pocket near the base of the Tower. She'd been badly-injured by the Terminal Broadcast - it had killed all of her cybernetics - but she was alive.

The prognosis, apparently, was good. It would be slow, but the doctors expected a full recovery.

Although it had been scrambled by the Broadcast, data had been salvaged from her omnitool. That along with Shepard's own testimony were the main sources of information concerning what exactly had happened onboard the Citadel during those last, tumultuous minutes of the War.

The geth continued, 'We believe the Old Machines were attempting to crash galactic civilisation by destroying its infrastructure. It seems that they had convinced themselves that mutual co-existence with organics was impossible. Perhaps by doing this they believed they could reduce competition within the galaxy for future synthetic societies. Or perhaps their action was simply what you would describe as "petty". It appears they regarded their own destruction as better than any possible co-operation with others. The geth do not consider the Old Machines to be an acceptable role-model.'

Twice in one day, Fortack found himself reduced to unexpected laughter. The Committee looked alarmed. The sound of guttural krogan mirth echoed inside the interview room. After a moment, Fortack managed to compose himself.

It was time to change the subject, though. He still had questions about their earlier discussion.

'So you think you can plug the relays back in,' Fortack said.

He was sceptical. But he was also intrigued. After the relays failed, he'd simply assumed that he'd spend the rest of his life stuck here on Earth. If he could go back to Tuchanka, though, that was interesting. The QEC reports made it sound like things were changing there. And he had a few ideas about things he could do, to help.

'Yes,' the geth said. 'We have already begun the required analysis.'

'It won't happen overnight,' Dr. Cole added. 'Realistically, we're looking at a five-year plan. The first step is getting the Sol-Arcturus link active again. If we can do that, the next step will probably be Sol to Rannoch.'

Fortack was puzzled. 'Sol to Rannoch? As far as I know, there is no such direct routing.'

'Incorrect,' the geth said. 'The original network architecture permitted no direct routing. However, our analysis suggests that in principle, all relays can be mutually-interconnected nodes. The primary and secondary relay duality appears to be an artificial limitation, deliberately enforced on the system. It does not appear to be in any way due to the physics of the mass effect. The Old Machines appear to have designed the relay system to slow down and limit the expansion of organic societies. A network under our control does not need to accept such restrictions.'

'Why Rannoch?' Fortack asked.

'Because we're heavily-reliant on the geth collective's data-processing capacity,' Dr. Archer said. 'The Citadel's systems are all so much dead circuitry now - burned, melted, electrically-fried halfway to damnation. We can't use those. And the relays need a lot of data processing to work properly. We only have a plausible chance of getting the Charon Relay active because there are so many geth here in the Sol System. Strange as it sounds, to get the galaxy-wide network up and running again, we _have_ to connect Rannoch next. Sol-to-Arcturus will just be the quick and dirty test of the methodology.' He allowed himself a smile. 'There are teams working on the problem elsewhere, of course. We get program updates from Palaven and Thessia all the time, on the QEC. But most of the geth are here, with us. So it will almost certainly be Earth that gets back online first.'

Re-connecting the entire galaxy? Well, a lack of ambition was not a fault that the Committee's agents apparently suffered from.

'So that's one thing the Redevelopment Committee wants to do,' Fortack said. 'Okay, fine. But why talk to me? I'm not an expert on relays.'

'Urdnot Wrex sent us your CV,' Dr. Cole said. 'You have worked on other things, some of them of more immediate import.'

'Like what?' Fortack asked. He still didn't have a clear answer about why he was here, for all that this discussion was interesting. Wistfully, he noted to himself that he didn't get much intellectual conversation with other krogan. It would be pleasant to work with people with whom you could exchange ideas...

Then the bad thing happened.

'Well,' Dr. Archer said, 'we note you've worked a lot on agriculture. Crop genetics. Soil chemistry. That sort of thing.'

Fortack tensed up. He felt his fists ball at his sides.

Here it was. His shame. When he should have been working on weapons, armour and bombs, on things that would help his clan's warriors gain honour and glory ... instead, he'd been working on these things. His breathing sped up. His hearts beat faster. His stomach churned. Hearing and sight became sharper. He could hear the chatter next door, the moan of the wind outside and the shuffle of feet on the room's carpet.

'Because,' he heard himself say, surprised at how calm he sounded, 'the Clan Chief ordered me to. Of course.'

They were going to drag his shame out. Right here and now. Fortack realised he was here to be humiliated. The Committee would mock him, laugh at him, sneer at him and _send him away_...

He was facing another rejection.

'Well,' Dr. Archer said, 'actually, we're very impressed.'

What? Fortack froze. He felt the breath whistle past his lips. They were _what_?

'Yes,' Dr. Cole said. 'In particular your work on cultivating food-crops in hostile soils - we're very interested in that. Earth is something of a trainwreck, ecologically, and the Reaper War hasn't helped. And now we're having to figure out ways to feed about twenty-eight million aliens, as well as our own population.'

'We've been making heavy use of the quarian Liveships,' Dr. Archer said. 'Putting guns on them was stupid. But it meant they were in the allied fleet, when it came here. Which may have been just as well. Without them, who knows what the turian and the quarian troops would be eating right now?'

Each other, Fortack supposed.

'But it's not a permanent solution,' Dr. Cole said. 'The Liveship farms are being run at over four hundred percent of normal capacity. They're already starting to break down. We need to get a way to cultivate dextro foodstuffs, down here, and fast. Frankly, we were starting to despair until we saw your hostile-soils work.'

Fortack gawped. These mad, crazy, freakish aliens ... they _liked_ his work?

They liked his work.

This was insane. This was impossible. This was bizarre. And this was like the Sun coming up after a long, dark night.

They liked his work. No-one had ever said that to Fortack before, and he was nearly five hundred years old.

And apparently, the geth had to have the last word.

'Your approach to ion transport across osmotic gradients is innovative,' Blue-slash-415 said. 'Our data analysis supports your conclusions.'

'You,' Fortack said. 'You - like my work?'

Dr. Cole gave him a sidelong glance. He was having trouble reading her face but Fortack noted the hesitation before she spoke. 'Yes,' she said. 'Is that not what you were expecting?'

'There is the other matter,' Dr. Archer added, before Fortack could say anything.

The other matter. Fortack nodded to himself. For a moment he'd let himself think that maybe these mad aliens were going to show an interest in his research. No, obviously, the expected rejection was on its way.

'Oh yes,' Dr. Cole said. She sighed and looked toward the window. 'Those.'

'Those what?' Fortack asked.

Outside, the rain had stopped. Crepuscular rays leaked through the cloudbase. London's urban wreckage was visible in its shattered glory.

'We're also interested in your expertise in explosives,' Dr. Archer said.

'The Committee is very much in need of a new approach to demolitions,' Dr. Cole added. 'We were hoping that perhaps you could help.'

Demolitions? Explosives? They liked his work? But - where was the rejection? What was this? What was going on?

'With what?' Fortack asked. 'And you're desperate enough to ask a krogan?' Dr. Cole blinked. 'Not everyone hates your species, Fortack. In fact these days, I think very few people hate you.'

Just for a moment, a new expression crossed Dr. Archer's face. It might have been humour. 'In fact there's that petition,' he said. 'On the extranet. You know, the one with over two million signatures? They want your Clan Chief for Prime Minister.'

They wanted what-? Fortack boggled. He hadn't heard of this before. Wrex for Prime Minister? Once more, Fortack noted that he was surrounded by more mad humans. It was one thing to hear about the delightful mess they'd made of galactic politics, and it was quite another thing to be stranded on their homeworld, watching them make a glorious mess of their own politics.

If there was one truism in galactic affairs, it was that human internal problems had a habit of spreading. Whether it was turian contact, Collector attacks or Reaper invasions, if something happened to Earth, sooner or later it would be happening to everyone.

'Why?' he asked. 'Why me?'

'We have another problem,' Dr. Cole said. 'Dead Reapers. Lots of them. They're blocking roads, rivers and trainlines. It's inconvenient. But we don't really know what to do with them. Our current approach to demolitions isn't really getting anywhere. We need new ideas. You might have some.'

At this point the geth decided to intervene. 'The krogan are well-known for their interest in explosives,' Blue-slash-415 said. 'We also agree that-'

The geth's elaboration was cut short. Behind them, the door groaned and screeched open. Dr. Archer stared and Cole looked puzzled. Fortack turned.

It was Chorban. His face seemed wild.

'What-?' began Dr. Archer.

'Put the news on,' Chorban said. 'Now!' He pointed at a screen on the wall, behind them.

'Why?' Dr. Cole looked annoyed. 'We're a bit busy-'

Fortack eyed the salarian up. The little alien who had survived one of the worst Reaper attacks in the galaxy, who had tried to tell the world what he knew when the world didn't want to know, and who had been willing to tell his story to a krogan. Beneath them, another pipe groaned within the building's heating system. The wind rattled against the windows.

Fortack made a snap judgement.

He stood up. 'I think we should listen to him,' he said. 'I'm putting the screen on. If anyone wants to stop the krogan over here, feel free to try!'

Apparently no-one did. Dr. Archer subsided into his chair, looking perturbed. The geth just watched, head-flaps moving. Fortack strode over to the screen and flicked it on.

A news broadcast flickered into life on the screen. There was some static - more VI processing problems, no doubt - but the quality was good enough. A news reader was sat behind a desk. Her voice crackled out from the speakers, tinny but audible.

'...news just breaking,' she was saying. 'A starship has been detected entering the inner solar system. Its profile is consistent with the SSV _Normandy_, the Alliance warship formerly captained by Commander Shepard. The _Normandy_ was assumed lost after the Terminal Broadcast, because of the disruption to the Charon Relay...'

'The _Normandy_?' Dr. Cole said. 'It survived?'

'...we'll go now to our correspondent, who is outside the Alliance Deep Space Monitoring Facility in Rio...'

'I heard they were in flight,' Chorban said, 'when the relay corridor collapsed. Everyone assumed the ship was destroyed. It should have been sheared apart! The tidal gradient across the boundary region should have been sky-high.'

'Apparently it wasn't,' Fortack said.

Chorban began, 'But the existing theory-'

'May be a big stinking pack of Reaper lies,' Fortack said bluntly. 'If we're to make any sense of this situation, we need to do what you said.'

'What I said?'

'Yes. Earlier, when we were talking. We need to stop just accepting what other people have told us. We need to just stop taking everything on faith and sitting back and letting the "grown-ups" make the decisions. We need to start thinking for ourselves. We need to take control of our own future!' Fortack pounded his fist into his other hand. That rant had felt good.

Chorban looked away from the screen, and straight at him. 'Then what do you want to do?' he asked.

That pulled Fortack up short. What did he want to do? All this grand talk about taking control of the future and forging new destinies sounded good, but how did you begin? Could you begin?

There were always reasons not to act. Social pressures. Disapproval. Lack of money. People talking. The other krogan, the warriors, they would regard all this as quite crazy. And they certainly wouldn't agree with Fortack going along with it.

But Wrex had. Fortack was only here because apparently the Clan Leader saw merit in what the Committee was doing. And if not everyone disapproved, then perhaps...

Maybe sometimes, change has to start at home.

'Are you all right?' Chorban asked, nictitating membranes flicking across his eyes.

'Yes,' Fortack said. 'I think I am. I was just working something through. In my head.'

He turned around, back to the humans and the telescreen.

The news had moved to some inconsequential blathering from ANN's correspondent, who was using a lot of long-winded sentences to hide the fact that he didn't really know much more than they'd already been told. Several interviews followed, with various people. Few of them really added anything, except to confirm that the detection definitely was the _Normandy_.

'If it's taken them all these months to get back,' Dr. Cole was saying, 'they must have been thrown a long way from Sol.'

'The crew must still be alive, then,' Dr. Archer said. 'That's something of a relief. I didn't appreciate it at the time, but they did a lot for ... for my family. And in a way, me. I think - I didn't enjoy our encounter, but I had no right to after what I'd done. But what she did was right.'

'Shepard saved all our lives,' Dr. Cole noted. 'And I think she saved your humanity, Gavin.'

'Yes,' Dr. Archer. 'I think that was true.'

Fortack moved closer. If the _Normandy_ could make an epic journey, he decided, so could he. The difference was, his was happening entirely inside his head.

'I've made a decision,' he said.

'Oh?' Dr. Cole asked.

'I want in,' the krogan said. 'Whatever it is you're doing, I want to help.' He looked at Chorban. 'And I reckon this salarian could help, too.'

Dr. Cole glanced at the telescreen and then back to Fortack. 'Well,' she said, 'welcome abaord.'

This time, Fortack understood her expression without any trouble.


End file.
